The prior art discloses a number of optical parametric oscillators.
For example, Espen Lippert et al. published an article, on 2 Dec. 2010 in Optics Express, entitled, “A 22-watt mid-infrared optical parametric oscillator with V-shaped 3-mirror ring resonator.” This publication concerns an optical parametric oscillator (OPO) ring resonator used for power scaling of mid-wave infrared (MWIR) coherent sources. The apparatus uses a V-shaped 3-mirror ring resonator to allow two passes of the beams through a nonlinear crystal to achieve 22 W of output power.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,079,557 relates an intracavity OPO laser. The apparatus overlaps an OPO cavity with a laser resonator cavity with a nonlinear optical crystal (NLO) in the overlapping region. Using mirrors, the wavelengths are all reflected through the NLO crystal and the target wavelength beam is separated from the fundamental wavelength beam.
An improved way, however, is still necessary to achieve five separate output wavelengths all aligned on a single beam line.